I found chapter six full of more useful information for teaching young readers and writers. I am familiar with word walls and word wall activities. I use the word wall in my first grade classroom every day. I was reassured after reading this chapter because I already use many of the activities that were mentioned in the chapter for building word knowledge and writing ability. Our grade level team chooses word wall words to focus on each week. On most Mondays I have my students practice writing the words of the week. We write them in sentences and chant and cheer them. These words are added to the making words center and I hide the words on subsequent days in the morning message that I write daily.
I like the idea of making riddle books (p. 194) to teach repeated writing of high frequency words and making up riddles to teach word wall words. The example in the text was something like, "It starts with /g/ and rhymes with /wet/." I also like the idea of using big books and having small groups of students identify high frequency words. The text is proving to be a good resource for teaching strategies and activities.
I found an article that appeared in Reading Horizons in 2009. It highlights a study that used a word wall and accompanying activities to improve word recognition for first graders. Although the study had limitations, it provides further evidence of the effectiveness of word walls in the classroom.
http://proquest.umi.com.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/pqdlink?did=1935140291&Fmt=7&clientId=5241&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Before I read the chapters for this week, I read Lise's article that she's presenting in class. I found it particularly interesting that the author talks about all the academic language we bombard students with in an effort to teach them how to comprehend text. In the end they wind up being able to repeat terms like "summarizing" but they don't know what "summarizing" means. What I got from reading the article is that as teachers we have to be careful not to overwhelm students with too much academic language, especially in the early grades. Simplicity seems to be the order of the day when it comes to teaching young learners. It's important not to bombard them with tasks that are too complex and confusing. Read alouds should be brief and focus on one concept. I enjoyed reading the teacher example in Chapter 6 (pp. 184 - 188) of the text where the teacher uses one text A House for Hermit Crab as the basis for all of her reading and writing activities. Perhaps students don't need to know the academic terms for what they are doing in class, they just need to know that learning can be fun and interesting.
Sources
Tompkins, G.E. (2010). Literacy for the 21st century: A balanced approach (5th ed.).
Boston, MA: Pearson.
Hi Eve,
ReplyDeleteYour reaction to Lise's article is just what I was thinking. It must take practice to set out clear learning intentions for your class, and then to talk about it in class to make sure students understand what they are learning and why they are learning it.
Sometimes I read about concepts to teach students, such as "Learn to decode words using initial consonant sounds", and I think, Wow, it takes me a few minutes to fully process what that means! How could I simplify this so a 7 year old student would understand? Otherwise, won't students just become frustrated and tune out that highly academic language?
Thanks for your post!
-Kristen